It took a while, but Congressman Ron Klein has finally figured out that the best way to beat Allen West is to let Allen West beat himself. By talking. This morning, Klein's campaign released a highlighted transcript of West's remarks during a talk radio appearance last week.
You can listen to the whole interview here. The host, Marie Stroughter, a co-founder of African-American Conservatives, appears to be a loyal reader of the Juice. She posed the following question to West:
[T]hose on the left including the editorial page of the Broward New Times, which has long campaigned against you since you became a conservative superstar, has labeled you a war criminal and a Jack Bauer wannabe.
These charges are in addition to the fact that accusations because you are an African-American conservative, therefore you must be some sort of sellout. How much have these smears against you affected you and your family personally, and how much have they affected your campaign?
Actually this blog hasn't called West a "war criminal." It simply raised questions about whether West's unceremonious departure from the U.S. Army qualifies him as the true American patriot he claims to be. Nor has the Juice called West a "sellout." We just pointed out that West is an active member of the tea party movement, which has been labeled racist by the NAACP. Awkward! West answered the question thus:
Well, I have got to tell you, it kind of angers my wife and two daughters. But as far as me being a combat veteran, name-calling doesn't bother me whatsoever... I just really believe that all good ol' Ron is going to do is to use the liberal cronies that he has here in the Sun-Sentinel, the Palm Beach Post, or the Broward New Times or some of the other local liberal blogs to be the ones that come out and do his sniping, which does not bother me one bit.
At other points in the interview, West makes a reference to "liberal blogs emanating out of South Florida" that are a "mouthpiece" for Klein. The Juice, West believes, is one of the "snippy little chihuahuas that he sends out."
As author of most of the Allen West posts on this blog, I was stunned to learn that I could be crony mouthpiece chihuahua. But then again, if Ron Klein really had brainwashed me, then I would be the last person to know about it.
So this morning, I phoned Sarah Rothschild, Klein's communications director, and asked her point blank: Is it true that the Ron Klein campaign is the architect of a liberal media conspiracy? Rothschild wasn't quite prepared to broach such an explosive subject in extemporaneous fashion, but she emailed the following statement:
Allen West's positions are extreme, radical and beyond the mainstream. With West, reality is stranger than fiction, so all questions regarding his positions should be directed to his campaign.
At the very least, Klein didn't perform a very thorough brainwashing or he would have prevented this post about how he panders to Israeli hardliners or this post about how he used taxpayer dollars to print out and mail an informational flier that was clearly campaign literature.
